American cinematographer (Mar 1933)

8 American Cinematographer • March 1933 Ernst Lubitsch Hollywood Still Leads . . says Ernst Lubitsch by Barney Hutchison D ESPITE the tremendous strides which European film production has made in the past few years, American technicians and American technique are still far in the lead, according to Ernst Lubitsch, who has just returned from a vacation spent among the major production centres of Europe. “While I visited the European studios principally for the pleasure of again greeting my old friends there,” says he, “I could not help making some observations of the conditions existing in the European industry. First of all, of course, I was amazed at the tremendous improvement made in the physical equipment of the larger studios since the days when I worked there. Such plants as the great UFA studio at Berlin, and the Paramount studio near Paris, are in every way comparable to American studios; V. while even the smaller plants are very well-fitted. “There is, however, one tremendous difference between the European and American studios: Europe does not have the advantage of Hollywood’s superb technicians, and the inestimable benefits brought by their perfect mastery of the technical aspects of production. Of course, America has no monopoly of expert technicians, but the American cameramen are on the whole far, far ahead of their con- tinental confreres. When I first came to this country, more than ten years ago, I repeatedly said that the American Cinematographers were the best in the world, and the pass- ing of time has merely made that statement more true than ever. The American technician has little or nothing to learn from the European, while on the other hand the European technicians (particularly the cameramen) could learn a great deal from America. “The art of the screen progresses only as fast as the technicians attain mastery of their difficult tasks; and where the technicians encounter difficulties, they in turn impose restrictions upon director, writer, cutter, and every other person connected with the making of the film. For example, in Europe the optical printer is practically un- known, and dissolves are made in the camera. Moreover, the cameramen there still have a great deal of trouble in doing this. In consequence, the directors, writers and cut- ters are forced to make most of their transitions by direct cuts. Let us say, for example, that we have a sequence showing two men talking about a woman; we want to show her on the screen while they talk about her. Here in Hollywood we would naturally dissolve from the first scene (of the men, talking) to the scenes showing the woman. In Europe, they could not do that: they would have to make a direct cut from the closeup of the men talking to the woman they were talking about. To my mind, that is not good technique, for it is too abrupt— too confusing to the audience. The scenes showing the woman might be laid miles away, and at an entirely dif- ferent time; such a transition is as unpleasantly jarring as a false note in music. “The artistic phases of European cinematography are often very good, but they are based on a basically different concept from those of American cinematographers. Here, we almost always pay greater attention to lighting the faces of the players than is done in Europe; our cinematographers endeavor to express the mood of a scene visually without sacrificing a good commercial rendition of the faces of the actors. In Europe, on the other hand, the cinematographer concentrates on the general mood of a scene—and if a player’s face has to be slighted, or to be left in the shadows, it does not matter so much. At times, this is good, but practiced as a general thing, I do not think it is as satis- factory as our American style of lighting. “The moving-camera technique is used—and abused— by Europeans exactly as it is here. It is nothing new; it wasn’t even new when Dupont and Karl Freund used it years ago in The Last Laugh.’ It can be tremendously effective—or tremendously injurious. Like every other technical trick, either of direction, stagecraft or photog- raphy, the moving camera is good only as long as it is unnoticeable; as long as it is natural to a scene. Both in Europe and in Hollywood, the moving camera is used all too often as a refuge for directors who can think of no other way to keep their stories moving dramatically than recourse to physical movement of the camera. Used that way, it disturbs the audience, often confuses them, and imposes on the cinematographer unnecessary restric- tions and difficulties. “As I have said, optical printing is practically unknown in the European studios. So, too, is process cinematography. Paramount’s Paris and London studios have, I believe, done a little of this sort of work, following detailed instructions from Farciot Edouart here in Hollywood; but elsewhere process work of any sort is unknown. “The weakest point in the European film industry however, is the laboratories. With the exception of the UFA laboratory in Berlin and the Paramount laboratory Continued on Page 38